There is already a proposal to use sortition to form a third legislative house, of citizens who would have responsibility for deliberating on whether legislation would harm future generations: Rupert Read’s ‘Guardians of the Future’ (2012)
This seems more promising than re-weighting the value of votes of certain groups whose self-interest is presumed to lie more in the future given that i) voters tend not to vote much on the basis of self-interest, ii) to the extent that slightly younger generations have a greater interest in the future it is only in the very near future, which seems roughly equally compatible with disastrous policies iii) we have little, if any, reason to suppose that younger generations are epistemically capable of judging what policy would best serve their self-interest >50 years out.
The deliberative council idea has advantages over vote reweighting on all three counts: i) the citizens would be tasked explicitly with judging whether policies would aid or harm the future, rather than voting in whatever way in the hope that their vote proxies future interests, ii) they would be tasked with considering the long run future not just their self-interest (which extends maybe 50 years into the future, but which, due to time preference, might on average be a lot shorter), iii) such a deliberative council would have ample time and access to expertise (deliberative fora tend to give participants access to a variety of experts to help inform their deliberations) and be explicitly and implicitly (e.g. by the setup) to deliberate about what would produce the best interests- these kinds of setups have been widely used participants seem to tend to deliberate pretty well and reach relatively informed judgments (at least compared to the typical voter): see some case studies.
That said I think there may still be grounds to reject even this proposal, primarily that one may still be concerned about (iii) the epistemic question, even in these comparatively ideal circumstances.
There is already a proposal to use sortition to form a third legislative house, of citizens who would have responsibility for deliberating on whether legislation would harm future generations: Rupert Read’s ‘Guardians of the Future’ (2012)
This seems more promising than re-weighting the value of votes of certain groups whose self-interest is presumed to lie more in the future given that i) voters tend not to vote much on the basis of self-interest, ii) to the extent that slightly younger generations have a greater interest in the future it is only in the very near future, which seems roughly equally compatible with disastrous policies iii) we have little, if any, reason to suppose that younger generations are epistemically capable of judging what policy would best serve their self-interest >50 years out.
The deliberative council idea has advantages over vote reweighting on all three counts: i) the citizens would be tasked explicitly with judging whether policies would aid or harm the future, rather than voting in whatever way in the hope that their vote proxies future interests, ii) they would be tasked with considering the long run future not just their self-interest (which extends maybe 50 years into the future, but which, due to time preference, might on average be a lot shorter), iii) such a deliberative council would have ample time and access to expertise (deliberative fora tend to give participants access to a variety of experts to help inform their deliberations) and be explicitly and implicitly (e.g. by the setup) to deliberate about what would produce the best interests- these kinds of setups have been widely used participants seem to tend to deliberate pretty well and reach relatively informed judgments (at least compared to the typical voter): see some case studies.
That said I think there may still be grounds to reject even this proposal, primarily that one may still be concerned about (iii) the epistemic question, even in these comparatively ideal circumstances.